


The Grains of Time

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:39:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dream in dreams -- Preludes and Nocturnes</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grains of Time

**Title:** The Grains of Time  
**Day/Theme:** February 12 / dreamtime  
**Series:** Sandman  
**Character/Pairing:** Dream  
**Rating:** G  
Thoughts eddy and swirl in a quiet spill of background noise as the man passes through dreams. One moment he steps into an adventure quest dream of a ten year old girl, passing through the slain dragon's teeth, and the next he is stepping onto the shores of a nudist colony. Seven league boots carry a man seven leagues per foot, but to tread through dreams requires a license that is not easily attainable.

The man contemplates bubbles for those instants: glass bubbles, fragile in shape and in sound, and yet for the eternity of a moment does a bubble hold its form. It is strong in that moment. For its purposes, a bubble need only be strong in that moment, and then it may pop in a faint drizzle of gentle soap. A moment, however, may last forever, perfect in its timelessness, and to be caught in the bubble that lasts in that moment is a torture. It is no small thing to enslave another human being, and to enslave one Endless in the place of another -– but the instants pass and thoughts fragment under the strain of exhaustion to quietly move as a backdrop.

Sand swirls underfoot. It is sand in its shifting forms and particles that facilitate this journey. It is sand that is a tool available to him almost anywhere and thus a little part of his essence. Clarity returns for an instant before he collapses, like his thoughts, into the soft grains:

I am home.


End file.
